This episode is a fun one for me. I’m an entrepreneur, so I love watching Shark Tank. If you’re not familiar with the show, it’s where some regular person

who has the beginnings of a business comes on and pitches the idea to 5 investors, called Sharks. The investors ask questions and decide if they want to become partners with that person and invest in the business.

Some of the people who have gone on there have gotten deals and gone on to great success. Others have gotten no deal, but perhaps some constructive criticism and encouragement. And then there are others that have just gotten criticism. And of course that’s part of what makes it entertaining.

Here’s some interesting facts about Shark Tank:

Each season, they film batches of episodes together. All of the sharks come out to California for 2 weeks in June and they see as many as ten product pitches in each 10-hour day of filming. Then they come out again for 2 weeks in September and do the same thing. Out of all that, they get the 22 episodes for a season.

In a recent season, there were 158 pitches filmed, but only 88 of them actually got on the air. The pitches average about 45 minutes, and then they get edited down to about 11 minutes each.

Many of the deals made on the show never actually happen. And really that makes sense. The person might get their sales or cost numbers wrong, or some other details that don’t add up, and that can obviously cause a change of mind for the investor.

But my conversation today is with a young business man named Max, and in his case, the investment in his business DID happen. Max is a 19 year old college student, and he has developed a cold-brew coffee filter that he hopes will soon become a household product and introduce lots of people to the idea of cold-brew coffee.

And it turns out Mark Cuban, who’s one of the sharks and is also a billionaire investor who owns the Dallas Mavericks basketball team, also thought the product has potential, so he and Max are now partners in this venture. And I agree, it’s a pretty clever idea.

As you’ll tell from our conversation, Max is a really bright kid and he’s got a tremendous future. I loved talking with him, and really I liked kind of getting the perspective of someone that has actually gone on that show – how he prepared for it, how he got the deal, and what’s happened since then. Going on a show like this to pitch your idea to investors is one of those things that’s part exhilarating and part terrifying.

If you want to watch the episode with Max, it’s this current season of Shark Tank, which is Season 10, and he’s on episode 9. It aired on January 6, 2019.